An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Thursday, September 6, 2012

It’s International Murfin Day! Woot, Woot!

A rendering of the supposed Murfin family Arms.

It
may have escaped your attention but today is International Murfin Day!Break out the Champaign!Bring on
the dancing girls!Pass the biscuits and
jam!Some Murfins are more adventuresome
than others, you see.

We
owe this fabulous observation to Charles
Edward Murfin, Jr. better known simply as Ed, a Disciples of
Christ minister living in retirement in Jacksonville, Florida.For
years Ed has doggedly been compiling genealogical
info on Murfins around the world.His
astonishing diligence has resulted in detailed family line histories, some
going back far into the mists of time, which he shares at http://www.murfingenealogy.com/
.

Not
content to just do the research, Ed’s dream is to connect Murfins everywhere
and all of those with the many variations on the name.His motto is “All Murfins should be friends.”Murfins can be found from ancestral England to Ireland (Ulster), Canada, the United
States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other locations.

Ed’s
dream for International Murfin Day is to raise public awareness of the name and
the many families it is part of, and possibly to turn up yet more Murfins and
more information that may be able to fill in the inevitable blanks and gaps of
any family history.To this end he is
encouraging public messages—letters to the editor, articles in local papers,
and maybe even blog entries like this.Also he is hoping to get all of the major search engines to really
notice Murfins by encouraging folks to log on to Google, Bing, Yahoo, and/or your other favorites and enter a search
for Murfin.Go ahead now, do as you’re
told.I’ll wait for you to finish and
you can come back and finish this.

Back
so soon?You probably noticed a lot of
entries, including local businesses, and numerous individuals with Facebook or other social media
pages.But several names keep
repeating.These best known Murfins
include such historic figures as Admiral
Orin Murfin who commanded forces who searched for Amelia Earhart and compiled the official U.S. Navy report on the attack on Pearl Harbor: playwright/screen writer Jane Murfin; and less happily, Melody Ann Murfin, a
drug addicted prostitute who became a victim of Seattle’s Green River Killer.Ed’s
late brother James V. Murfin was a
noted historian of the U. S. Parks
Service and author of one of the very best Civil War battle histories, The Gleam of Bayonets:The Battle of Antietam and Robert E. Lee’s
Maryland Campaign.

Contemporary
notables include Ross C Murfin, a professor
of English and administrator at Southern Methodist University, who’s literary
criticism is widely admired; Justin
Murfin, an assistant professor of finance at Yale; and David Murfin,
the owner of Murfin Drilling, the
leading oil exploration company in Kansas
and recipient of several industry awards.My nephew Ira S. Murfin, aplaywright, performer, and poet,
is a Murfin with a bullet by his name as an up and comer.

Because
of this blog and my books, my name pops up embarrassingly often on some of the
search engines when compared to honest folks.As I have noted before, I dangle precariously from the family tree—an adopted
son with no actual Murfin blood.Ed is
generous about including me anyway.

Growing
up, we were told that our name was derived from the Irish Murphy, and had been changed when our ancestors arrived in the U.S.
after the American Revolution.Although the time frame for the arrival was
seemingly correct—a Pennsylvania Long
Rifle made about 1785 which got a replacement barrel in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1802hangs on my living
room wall and has been handed down for generations—the origins were not.Much to my own personal astonishment, Ed’s
research showed that Murfins originated in Great
Britain.

Some
researchers identify the name as Welsh in
origins.Others cite Northumberland just south of Scotland which had a large Celtic population.Both origin tales trace the name to variation
on Merlyn, the legendary Druid or Wizard who figures prominently in the Arthurian legends and other folk lore.Many Murfins can still be found in the north
of England in Yorkshire and a little
further south in Derbyshire.One of those Murfins was Sir Thomas Murfin who became Lord Mayor of London in 1518.A good many Murfins were apparently Round Heads—Puritans—in the English Civil War.

There are many variant forms
of the name.The oldest known form is
the Gaelic Myrddin (Merlin) which
was first found in an Anglo-Saxon form
as Mervin in the Doomsday Book of Durham in 1086.Other early variations were Mirfyne, Myrfyn and Mirfin. More
modern variant spellings include Marvin,
Mervin, Mirfin and Mervyn.The Murfin spelling seems to have first been
used in the 15th Century.

At
the top of the page is a rendering of a coat
of arms apparently awarded to some Murfin at some time.It probably by right only belonged to the
gentleman to which it was originally granted or at most his immediate family.However different companies market the arms
as the official Murfin family crest and it can be purchased on coffee mugs, t-shirts,
and even mouse pads.Or framed to hang
on the wall like the copy I got for Christmas
one year.Almost assuredly by the
rules of Heraldry virtually no
modern Murfin is entitled to use it.But
that doesn’t stop us.

Like
any clan with wide tendrils, there were undoubtedly as many horse thieves,
drunks, and bigamists in our lineage as heroes, gentlefolk and scholars.None the less, today we celebrate them all.

1 comment:

Yup, old 'Roundhead Murfin' played third base for the AA Utica Clubbers around the turn of the last century .... but Patrick is still my favorite Murfin! - Say, didn't that used to be a TV show with Ray Ralston ?